


Ghazan Appreciation Week Drabbles

by RhazadeWaterbender



Series: Red Lotus Appreciation Weeks 2015 [3]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, Gen, Ghazan Appreciation Week, Lavaman and his epic hair, Red Lotus, Red Lotus appreciation weeks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-25 22:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4979410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhazadeWaterbender/pseuds/RhazadeWaterbender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Up next: our favorite geothermal punch-clock antivillain!  May contain Mingzan or at least hints thereof, and will probably contain canon-typical violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1:  Childhood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kid!Ghazan not quite lavabending.

At the edge of a town at the edge of the great desert, a boy plays with a handful of sand, idly letting it shift and change in the air.

His life has been more... _settled_...than those of the ancestors who sailed their rafts through the desert.  Still, his gift made itself known some years ago; and, at ten, he has a ten-year-old’s dreams of adventure.

He spins the sand, creating a tiny simoom between his little mahogany hands.

 _It’s all tiny rocks.  I wonder if I can make it act like_ one _rock_...

And, still spinning it, he gives the sand a _squeeze_.

At first, it seems like it’s doing what he wants it to do.  Then, heat—closer and fiercer than the afternoon sun—grazes the boy’s fingertips.  Spitting a word that his sister had instructed him not to repeat, he drops the sand—parts of which have turned to glassy slag—and puts his sore fingers in his mouth to cool them.

He’s left with the distinct impression that he’s done something he shouldn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still say he was a sandbender, although I propose him here as the descendant of sandbenders who have assimilated.


	2. Day 2:  Two Out Of Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel compelled to break everyone's heart at _least_ once per Appreciation Week.

Their father is out of the picture; their mother, a dissolute wreck who’s rarely home.  His sister, some years older, is the one who has to step up and keep their lives—barely—together for them.

He’s thirteen, with moon-peach fuzz on his face, when—in a moment of desperation—he causes a disaster.  His sister coolly bundles together some essentials for him and tells him to run.  She hadn’t even witnessed it; still, even now, he worries about what may have become of her.  After all, it’s not as if he can go back.

The scarred boy and the incredibly tall girl become his surrogate family.  It’s not until later that the healer—tiny and flippant and _angry_ —throws in with them.  He’s not even sure how much of a damn she actually gives about any of them, or really much of _anything_...until the day when she asks him, in so many words, what his story is.

He tells her, and receives hers—that of a daughter dismissed as inadequate, helpless, _incomplete_ —in return.  Something changes between them that day.

It’s not until years later that it quite occurs to him exactly _what_ form, at least on his end, that change is taking.

But now, a grand and ambitious plan is being set into motion.  Letting her know can wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw "two out of three" and just _had_ to imply Mingzan.


	3. Day 3:  Prison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's my attempt at making what may have been the least _obviously_ hellacious cell a bit _more_ so.

He’s on a barge in open ocean; that much, he’s been able to discern.  Nowhere near any solid ground. Being, as often as not, too seasick to stand up when he wants nothing more than to pace like a caged tigerdillo would be enough on its own.  

But it apparently _wasn’t_ enough. He’s sure they probably _think_ that they’ve planed the hardwood deck—and the latticework cage of the same material that directly contains him—perfectly smooth.  After all, they’ve taken his thin-soled boots; if they were going to _taunt_ him by making him all the more keenly aware of how far he is from even the seabed, they wouldn’t _compound_ his discomfort by leaving the cell rough and splintery in places on _purpose_...right?  

It still remains that he’s pulled more than one tiny shard of the deck out of his foot already.  And, after a moment of particular frustration, pulled more than one tiny shard of the lattice out of the heel of his hand.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know the drill when it comes to prison prompts by now.  If I hadn't gotten a suggestion as to how to make things worse, this would probably have been left at him being seasick and disoriented.


	4. Day 4:  Appearance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recently inked; hints of Mingzan. I think that about sums it up.

He’s tall now—if still shorter than the sniper; no need to duck as she tends to under door lintels—and broad-shouldered; he hasn’t given his hair more than a trim since he fled the ruin of his childhood.  Even if it weren’t for the neatly-trimmed—if still slightly sparse—arc of hair that frames his mouth now, he’d look little like that scrawny boy frightened of his own power and what it might bring down upon him.

He flinches a little as the healer runs a glowing tendril over his shoulder, where a blackwork rosette—one of a pair—is still new and raw against the burnt-sienna of his skin.  For the time being, that was all that he’d dared have done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I know; both of the Red Lotus ops with obvious tattoos had that end up being a focus for the "appearance" theme.


	5. Day 5:  Relationships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And as usual, when faced with _this_ theme, I run with something platonic.  There's a story regarding what's going on with P'Li in the background.

“You told me that you were just trying to help your friend escape,” he accuses.  “You didn’t say what that was going to involve.”

Some distance away: the same sound that he’d heard as he was... _creating a distraction_.  The sound that had heralded him nearly being knocked off of his feet by the shockwave—despite the fact that his attacker had been aiming to _miss_.

“We’re all alive, aren’t we?”  The older boy has a rag drenched in pilfered baijiu pressed to his forehead.  Despite the death-grip he’s got on it, blood still seeps through.

Two shots in quick succession.  If she wasn’t aiming to finish the bastard before, she definitely is now.

“You still didn’t tell me anything except that some rich creep was holding a firebender girl against her will.  And you _could_ have told me ahead of time that your friend was the rich creep’s third-eye artillery, and that he was going to try to have her kill us!”

A glare from the one green eye that isn’t swollen shut.  “First of all, _don’t_ call her artillery.”  His tone softens. “Secondly, that wasn’t supposed to happen.  I thought he’d be asleep, and I could get in, steal the key, and sneak her out past the guards.”  He sighs. “Look...I’m sorry.  If you want to just go your own way and never hear from us again, I’ll understand that.”

The younger boy makes his face as deliberately deadpan as possible.  Then, he winds up and slugs the older boy with sufficient force to slam him against the wall of their makeshift shelter.  The older boy loses his grip on his improvised pressure dressing, catches himself, straightens, and grips his bruised jaw with an expression of pure disbelief.

“Now we’re even.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to speculate as to whether or not I just wanted to write young!Zaheer getting sucker-punched.


	6. Day 6:  Lavabending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that's right; more Mingzan.

After the incident concerning Her Arrogant Majesty’s impressment service, he’s perhaps overly careful with the pressure trick.  Turning sand—and occasionally sandstone—to molten glass is one thing; anything that could make a hazard of his own or his friends’ very footing is quite another.  And while he’s sure that intensive study of the traditional forms of his desert-dwelling ancestors would be the answer, no such opportunity has ever presented itself.

In the end, he learns control by sparring with the healer, for whom shifting her element from solid to liquid is a given.  Her fighting style has always, by necessity, been unconventional; nonetheless, she has enough knowledge of the traditional sort that she can teach him the basics of any forms he can incorporate.

Many years later, he sees her flinch at the sight of it...and briefly hates himself for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ghazan was an earthbender who fought like a waterbender.  In my weird mind, this somehow added up to him being a primarily self-taught prodigy sandbender who did a lot of sparring with Ming-Hua.


	7. Day 7:  Stargazing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And I must've renamed the constellations about a thousand times."

It’s his friend with the split eyebrow who acquires him the astronomy guide.  He supposes it’s appropriate:  In childhood, he’d often climbed up onto the flat roof of the shabby little house to gaze at the night sky; and even now, he’s retained the habit of seeking out higher ground for the same purpose whenever it’s safe to do so.

Perhaps, given his talent, it's ironic that he looks to the sky.  Perhaps, in some other lifetime, he'd have actually _studied_ astronomy.  But as things are, the book and stargazing are enough.

Later, the healer takes to trying to ambush him on full moons.  It becomes something of a game between them.  One night, not long before the plan is to be implemented, she instead deigns to join him.  He takes that as a good sign.

And after the plan goes badly awry, and he finds himself confined on a barge in the open sea, one of the few things that give him any comfort is to search for anything to remind him of the other three among the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My hand slipped, I Mingzan'd _and_ ended on a bit of a low note; and that's a wrap.  Tune in next time when I try to write the character who's gonna be a legit _challenge_.


End file.
